PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — The first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison Tuesday as a Michigan judge lamented missed opportunities that could have prevented their teenage son from possessing a gun and killing four students in 2021.
“These convictions are not about poor parenting,” Oakland County Judge Cheryl Matthews said. “These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”
The hearing in a crowded, tense courtroom was the climax of an extraordinary effort to make others besides the 15-year-old attacker criminally responsible for a school shooting.
Jennifer and James Crumbley did not know Ethan Crumbley had a handgun — he called it his “beauty” — in a backpack when he was dropped off at Oxford High School. But prosecutors convinced jurors the parents still played a disastrous role in the violence.
The Crumbleys were accused of not securing the newly purchased gun at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health, especially when confronted with a chilling classroom drawing earlier that same day.
The Crumbleys earlier this year were convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
“The blood of our children is on your hands, too,” Craig Shilling told the couple, wearing a hoodie with the image of son Justin Shilling on his chest.
Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of…
